Aloha|Lēʻahi (Diamond Head) — A Crater Standing In for a War

The film's Afghanistan flashback — the wound Gilcrest carries through every scene — was shot at Diamond Head, and so were interiors for the launch centre. Both make sense once you know the crater. Hawaiians call it Lēʻahi. The Army called it Fort Ruger and drilled it full of bunkers, tunnels and gun emplacements starting in 1904, then cut a shaft and a spiral stair up to Fire Control Station Enliakai at the summit. Dry, brown, concrete, sun-hammered: from inside the tuff cone, with the ocean out of frame, it can pass for a great many places that are not Hawaiʻi.

The hike is 1.3 kilometres each way, most of it easy, the last stretch a set of steep stairs through a tunnel. Reservations are required for non-residents now, and the early slots go first.

What the flashback can't use is the view from the top: Waikīkī laid out to the west, the reef shelf showing turquoise through the surf, and on a clear morning the whole leeward coast. Stand up there and the film's central joke lands — a man flew all this way and spent the picture looking at the ground.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.